City committee reviews RFD demo of campaign finance, personal financial and lobby filing system; vendor outlines phased timeline

City council committee members received a demonstration of RFD’s online filing system for campaign finance reporting, personal financial statements (PFS), and a proposed lobbyist module that would be developed in a later phase.

Why this matters: staff said the system would centralize candidate, office‑holder and lobby filings in a Houston‑specific instance of an application RFD built for the Texas Ethics Commission. Committee members and vendor representatives discussed how filers create accounts, how administrative users manage filer IDs, data‑upload options, error checks and the vendor’s proposed schedule for phased implementation.

RFD’s Scott Glover, chief operating officer, described five modules the vendor proposed: campaign finance, personal financial statements, an administrative module for managing filers and filing cycles, and Houston‑specific lobby and financial disclosure modules. RFD representative Eric Dietz, director of systems development, walked committee members through a sample campaign finance filing, showing navigation, a wizard‑style “walk me through” flow, CSV upload/export options and the system’s error‑check routine.

“The file can go ahead and make any changes to that report that they need, and then file the new report,” Eric Dietz said, describing how the system handles corrections and successive filings. Dietz also noted the system differentiates between ‘‘no entry’’ and ‘‘0’’ and classifies errors so high‑severity validation issues must be fixed before a report can be filed.

On electronic signature and verification, Dietz said the Ethics Commission’s current configuration does not use a third‑party e‑signature product. “They do not do electronic signature,” he said. “Checking the checkbox, and entering your password served as a good enough electronic signature.”

Implementation timeline was discussed: staff and vendor described a two‑phase schedule. A vendor representative said the team is asking for a roughly 60‑day implementation window for Phase 1; if the city commits by Nov. 1, the vendor said it could have campaign‑finance, e‑file and admin modules available by Jan. 1. Phase 2—the lobby and financial disclosure modules—was described as a later deliverable on a longer schedule (vendor committed to a 180‑day delivery for Phase 2 in the statement of work).

Operational details and clarifications from the demo included: • Administrator role: City Secretary‑level administrators would create filer IDs and manage users; filers could not self‑register under the current configuration unless the administration enables that later. • Uploads and exports: the system supports CSV imports for contributions and expenditures and can export transactions; this was emphasized for large filers with many transactions. • Filing flows: campaign finance filers can begin a report, save partial entries, preview the PDF at any time and run an error check before filing; the system requires a user to acknowledge missing statutorily required parts if they choose to file without entering them. • Payment and public queries: RFD said Austin uses a third‑party payment vendor for some filings; RFD proposed providing a set of public queries (they mentioned 10 public‑facing queries in the implementation discussion) so the public can search filed data.

Staff and RFD representatives said the system will be delivered as a cloud‑based, software‑as‑a‑service product with an initial configuration fee and annual subscription costs; the committee did not discuss specific pricing during the session. RFD said recordings and training materials would be provided for council members and staff.

No formal action was taken at the meeting. Staff said they are negotiating a statement of work and will report back with proposed contract terms, implementation milestones and training plans before moving to a full deployment.

Ending: The committee thanked RFD representatives and scheduled continued review of the statement of work and rollout timing.